


The Opposite of Polar Opposites

by SainTalia



Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, F/M, James Wesley is a suave son of a bitch, Jarvis is too good for this world, Mainland China, Mandarin, One Night Stands, Oral Sex, Pepper Potts has questionable taste in men, Pre-Iron Man 1, Rough Sex, Sexual Content, Tony Stark is heard but not seen, and I aim to deliver, and probably this fic, author does not understand how Mandarin works, gratuitous fashion labels, hyper competent assistant bonding, the world needs more Pepper Potts fic, unspeakable things done in elevators club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 18:19:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6868210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SainTalia/pseuds/SainTalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the patron saint of vexed assistants could be very, very kind. Like dropping men in her path who could tell Versace from Givenchy and kiss like animals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Opposite of Polar Opposites

She could smell rain. It lingered down even in the lowest smog-smeared street of Quanzhou. 

She wanted rain. Craved it; to pull the heat off the pavement and weigh her hair with something other than sweat. It was a desperate, miserable sort of want. The same way she wanted six more hours in the day and to not be the only employee of Stark Industries in all of Fujian province.

But Pepper Potts didn’t get to want. That was for other, more optimistic breeds.

The crowds kept carrying. Signs blurred: inky, lurid, Mandarin or maybe Cantonese. She’d never understood the distinction. That was looking to be something of an oversight, now, but with Mr. Stark had gone the translators and her sanity for a month.

“Fuck.”  The word cleaved blunt. She tried it again. “Fuck _.”_ Let it take _. “Fuck.”_

People startled. Gawked. A little more and a little harder than they had for the last eight blocks. Pale, tall, American. Five inch heels and a dress hued like the Mediterranean. Shocking blue and watery emerald; sea foam green at the golden hour.

But gawking wasn’t new when one worked for Tony Stark. 

She stepped into the nearest bulwark which happened to be the mouth of a shop. Shelves spilled into the street: Yongchun paper paintings, Dehua porcelain, silk from Hangzhou, bamboo curtain art that could only have been made in Sichuan, Hanfu draped in every corner stitched red and gold, and embellished parasols of gossamer on gossamer layer of paper.

She wondered at one of the parasols. Rain would ruin it. Run the color. Bad luck and reverse psychology and maybe if she bought one, it would _rain_.

The woman running the shop rattled off something in Mandarin-but-maybe-Cantonese. Pepper didn’t understand, but that seemed her lot in life, at this point. They gestured between themselves, to the parasols, to her purse, to the street, then round and round again as English seemed a distant concept and Pepper wasn’t going to spontaneously master another language in the next ten minutes. 

Pity.

An urge struck to do a Tony Stark: hurl a fistful of money at the problem until it went away. But she couldn’t. At that moment, she would have rather gnawed off a limb than invoke even the _idea_ of his name.

Humidity snaked in, heat, the breath of a dozen languages. Grit worked between her Louboutin covered toes and sweat was finally coming off her scalp. It felt claustrophobic _. Obscene_. Saliva thinned in the well of her mouth.

A hand touched her elbow. 

She stalled.

Someone spoke beside her. Male. Catching hard at the consonants and rolling low over his vowels.

The woman nodded; went to a shelf and handed back a parasol wreathed red with maple and whiter than bone. The hand that had brushed her elbow reached to accept it, and she saw pale fingertips, fine-boned fingers, a Cartier watch across an exposed wrist. She traced hand to shoulder to face and there stood a man who would have been right at home in Stark Legal.

He was Ivy League. Bespoke suit with flat colors, Dolce glasses, cufflinks that served their purposes with expense but no pretense. All business.

And then he smiled. “May I?”

It took her a few painful seconds to catch up. She dug into her purse and didn’t know whether to hand him dollars or yuan, so gave him both. He took the stack and peeled off a few bills with barely a glance. 

The woman went sharper; gave words with barbs.

He raised an eyebrow and folded a bill back in. The woman took an abrupt and conciliatory tone. The bill returned and he offered the money, a wry curl to his mouth. The woman took it, though her parting was a long and narrow look over her shoulder.

Pepper felt vaguely wrong-footed. 

For the first time, he turned his face down. His eyes were pale—Sistine blue. Summer in Italy and gazing into the rafters of a chapel.

He held out her money. “I believe you’ll want this back?”

“I—yes.” She took it with two fingers; twisted her hand to tuck it back in. “Do I get my parasol with that?”

The wry curl unfurled to a smile. “By all means.” And with a deft flick he opened it, tipping the crown over her head until it rested against her shoulder.

Her fingers curled. Cool skin brushed her knuckles. “Thank you.”

He drifted back, hands sliding in his pockets. “It was my distinct pleasure.” And for a moment seemed to just drink in the sight of her. It left her dizzy; sun-drunk and dazed. She spun the parasol and let its shadow fall.

His gaze worked to her face. “I can’t say I know many people who’d try their hand at the Bai Yuan Lu markets without knowing Mandarin.”

She tutted. “Who says I don’t?”

“My mistake.” His mouth did something decidedly impish. “ _Yuánliàng wǒ_.”

“Alright,” She admitted. “Maybe I quite possibly don’t speak the language. It shouldn’t have been an issue, I thought I was…” She hadn’t much thought. The destination hadn’t been picked, just arrived to as frustration cut her to the bone. It was all a blur: an empty boardroom, a chaotic call from the jet, the slightly slurred admonishment of _don’t be such a killjoy, Potts, fucking christ._

He filled in: “Somewhere more amenable to tourists?”

“Zhongshan Road.” It fell sharp. “I was on break from contract arbitration and fancied a walk.”

His brought his hands up. “I should have realized. You are very much dressed to surmount.”

If anyone at SI had said that to her, it would have been derisive. A bit of _why are you trying so hard little miss glorified secretary?_ If it had been Tony—

That didn’t bear thinking.

But from this man it was a dry sort of sincerity, nothing underneath it but his self-depreciation. It wrong-footed her a second time. “I’m sorry.” And strangely enough she _was_. “I’m just a little bit snippy right now.” 

His shoulders stayed slack. “Of course.” There came another flicker of warmth. “I’d be snippy too if I ended up on the wrong end of Quanzhou.”

She dipped the parasol over her eyes. “That seems to be the story of the day.”

And he ducked, god help her. A little drop in his knees and he was grinning up at her from under the fringe. “Trouble navigating?” 

She was charmed. It was awful. It was _incredible._

“For a certain definition of navigating.” She plucked each word. “I seem to have misplaced my boss.”

“Where?”

“In Hong Kong.”

He blinked. “That’s—”

“Three-hundred miles away. Yes, I’m aware.”

He responded with equal aridity. “Well, you certainly don’t do things by halves.”

It yanked a giggle out of her. Not a laugh, not a political polite sound, not a careful hand over her mouth.  It was something brittle and young and far, far too bare. The parasol drifted back up. It was suddenly scorching underneath it.

“I’m a very ambitious woman. So is my boss.”

“Apparently.” He took a step in. Not overt but—close. “So you misplaced your boss…”

“There might have been a bit of active participation on his part.” Nothing happened to Tony Stark. _Tony Stark_ happened.

“So your boss misplaced himself. Because…why, exactly?”

“His favored establishments are illegal in Mainland China, not so much in Hong Kong.”

That slotted without even a moment of confusion. “He went to Wan Chai?”

“Probably.” The plane would have landed an hour ago. “Strippers hold a special place in his heart.”

Something went a little sharp on him. “And wallet, I’d imagine.”

Her tongue was venomous behind her teeth. “Quite.”

They held eye contact. It lingered: color and sound and a veritable _flood_ coursing around them. It was too raw, too much too soon and yet she couldn’t bring herself to break it.

He asked: “What were you looking for?”  Out here in streets she didn’t know in a country she didn’t belong in a place she couldn’t even string three words together.

“Nothing.” That wasn’t quite true. “I guess—to be somewhere else if I couldn’t be _someone_ else. Does it matter?”

Nothing in him wavered, not in intensity or his eyes on her face. “It’s an awful thing being taken for granted.”

She jolted. “What would you know about it?”

“I think you and I have similar job descriptions. Manage. Do all the little things to keep the big picture humming. Orchestrate while looking like you’re doing anything but. And while you’re trying to thread the needle, they just—”

“Assume,” She finished. “That the world bends to them by accident.”

It was the first time that anyone had been able to see it. One part of the world thought she was killing herself for Tony and the other thought she wasn’t killing herself enough. Ungrateful. Thankless. Not doing enough and pointless to try more.

She wondered what this little sliver of the world would think looking at them. Strangers. Locked in. Blistering. _Deprived._  

He rocked on heel, something like a shiver passing through him. Just as quickly he rolled his shoulders and straightened his tie. “How do you feel about Opera?”

The track had shifted. “Strongly.”

“Zhezi Opera?”

That was new. “I can’t say I’ve had the chance to form an opinion.”

He offered an arm. “Would you like to?”

And the thing was—

“I really would.” She tucked her hand into his elbow, pressed fingers in and felt muscle tense beneath silk lining.

He breathed in, out—exhale ghosting across her scalp. Then quite confidently he laid his free hand over hers. “Shall we?”

~

It wasn’t the deepest or the most dizzying Opera House she’d been in. It was, however, the most surprising. He ordered for them both because Mainland Opera Houses had _dining_. It was one of those things she’d never given thought to wanting. The sommelier had come to the table with white wine and a shallow bowl filled with—

“Longan-Guiyuan.” Her companion said, nails peeling back skin to expose translucent fruit.

It looked like grape just enough. He offered it. She twisted a hand to draw her hair against her neck, leaned down, and took it from his fingers with her teeth.

It pulped sweet over her tongue; drowned the venom but did nothing for the unrelenting heat.

He made a choked-off noise.

She swallowed the flesh, let the last of the sweetness dissipate, then tipped her head forward and caught what must have been the pit between her teeth.  Even in this low light his eyes were—blue, still, even through the shadow of her lashes.

She let her jaw unhinge. The pit dropped neatly into the dish.

His gaze stayed fixed on her teeth, her mouth, her tongue as it skated her bottom lip. Without any pretense he kicked his chair to her side of the table, sat down, and offered his wine glass. She drank from it.

She let her hair unspool and offered her glass in turn. He drank slow.

The lights dimmed and then dropped. They both turned towards stage, thigh to thigh, his suit scraping pleasantly against her knee. He spoke into the black: “I don’t know your name.”

 _Someone else_ , she thought, _anyone else_.  For a minute, an hour, a year.

She tensed. “Details makes things messy.”

There was a long pause and then: “They do.”  His palm settled on her thigh.

Above, the stage ignited in radiant color. They didn’t exchange another word until the denouement.

~

It rained. It rained like they’d need to build themselves an ark to survive in.

Pepper stepped out and felt it shroud her like a blessing. The neon smeared, the streetlights bled auric, the skyline shined like a kingdom of ghosts.

She could have drowned on dry land.

He watched from under her parasol, perfectly dry while she tipped back to _savor._

(“It won’t—”

 “It’s oiled, you know. I can’t hurt it.”

 “Don’t be facetious.”

“Never.”)

People ran past them laughing and shrieking.  Some cursed out the sky as they went. The night was a sodden halo splintering between concrete and _light._

Her hair was soaked flat to her skull; the droplets on her lashes hazing gold through her irises. She could still see him though, all properly buttoned up. “Are you going to spend all night up there?”

His mouth quirked. “Was that an option?”

She wanted to smear herself across him. Bring damp and disarray and leave him in ruin. And she could. She was chaos theory held together by sweat and skin, and the way he was looking at her, she _could._

“It’s certainly an option.” She let it lilt. “It’s just not the optimal one.” Silk turned lucent when wet, when pale, when thin. Her dress was all of the above. She stepped through the curtains of rain and finally let him get a proper look at her.

His stare nailed her to the ground. Ignition. When he came down the stairs, it was with such deliberate control the heat in her spine drenched her thighs. One hand found the small of her back, the other tipped the parasol over them both and then—

There was no pretense at _chaste._

His mouth slanted over hers and he kissed the rain right out of her mouth. Breath mingled, stuttered, and then he canted her head just so and pressed deep. Her jaw ached from the angle. Her thighs _ached_ from the angle.

She scrabbled desperately at his jacket just to stay standing.

If he’d taken the rain from her mouth, he’d sheared the breath from her lungs.

Distance came. Her lashes fluttered and he stared down like he’d found constellations in her eyes.  It was the kind of look a woman could get drunk on; could satiate herself with for years. It was too much and too far. She smoothed a hand up his cheek, his skull, and then clawed him back in. This time when it came it came with _teeth._

She hadn’t known it could be like this: slow and shuddering and completely synced _._ Her abdomen was shaking. The hand at her back fisted desperately in her dress. The hem hit the back of knees, her thighs, her—

Breath jagged. “Cab?”

“Ca—yeah.” She dug into his jacket. “ _Yes_.”

She didn’t have to ask _yours or mine_. He didn’t have to offer. It was instinct, sliding her hands in his. It was less instinct when he laced their fingers together.

~

His was a high rise; clean lined Neomodern with glass-faced everything including the elevators. She’d once seen Tony Stark do something _unspeakable_ in one in full view of thirty floors. This glass box had to be punishment. She’d done something awful in a past life.

She’d done something awful in _this_ life.

They breathed in tempo, his chin titled down, forehead pressed to her temple. They’d found rhythm, a shallow mimicry of what was to come.

A hand was at her hip, thumbing at wet silk before smoothing it back down. She wanted—

A phone rang. She nearly came out of her skin. She jolted backwards and suddenly they were at opposite ends of the elevator. He fished his cell from his jacket with unapologetic speed. “Yes Sir?” And then listened. 

And she understood: orders were coming down from on high. Revelation.

Hysteria bubbled up her throat because how many times had she been on his end? One minute dining, walking hand in hand, going from red wine to red sheets only for Tony Stark to crash through? And she’d jumped, God help her. She’d jumped every time Tony so much as glanced in her direction.

_It’s my job. I thought you understood that this is what I do. Mr. Stark asked for me, I can’t just ignore—_

And if (when) Tony sent the jet to get her tomorrow, hot Greek omelets waiting with a catalogue of the latest Haute Couture off Milan with no actual apology in sight—nothing would change.  She’d go back, no other way for her to live.

She didn’t _want_ another way to live.

“Yes, of course.” His eyes fixed on her, as if couldn’t decide whether she’d let him cross the space between them. “Do we have men in place?”

Glass pressed cold at the base of skull. Her dress left kaleidoscopic smudges where it touched and she let herself…drift. For a moment. An era.

And then: “Critical as in now, or critical as in a day?”

Her head rocked up.

His expression shifted very finely. Contrition. Not sorry for this, but apologetic that he wouldn’t be. That look had never been enough for anyone she’d been with. She could never understand why. It was gravity, inevitable. 

No one was ever thankful for what time she had to give them.

And he—

She took her phone from her purse, tipped the screen towards him, then watched him watch her switch it off. None of her boyfriends had ever understood the gesture, the few times that she’d made it. Most considered it something long owed and never thought further. A few had gotten angry it’d taken her so long to try.

Maybe that was why.

His eyebrows climbed. There was a hiss from the phone and he murmured. “Otherwise engaged, yes. It won’t be a problem.” And finally: “Thank you Sir.” And cut the line. He tipped his cell screen forward and shut it down.

Her breath faltered. The elevator doors chimed and slid. She rushed past him, unable to be touched. Knowing that she couldn’t be touched. If he got anywhere near her before they were behind a locked door—

Tony could finally start a club for unspeakable things done in elevators.

Her back hit the door; his hand the handle, the key, the lock. There was open space behind her; infinity to plunge through. They were in the skyline and glittering on high. Blue and gold on the walls, the bay at their backs, rain thundering down. She dragged him in by the lapels and he barely managed to kick the door. It was the starting gun. The world dissolved, mouths and hands and hips and hands and hands and _hands_. They shared oxygen until it was bruising. 

Her calves slammed the bed and spilled her backwards. Her arms flung out, hair a halo, vee of her thighs open. 

There was a gratifying lack of indecision. He undid his cufflinks and sent them clattering. In one sharp move he shed his jacket and flung it across a chair. 

His eyes never left her.

His eyes never left her, even as he went to his knees.

Hands. Warm. Pulling one stiletto off, the other; thumb pressed in the arch of her foot. His mouth hot on her ankle. Her calf. Her knee. The noises she made were breathy and then broken. He smirked and took off his glasses, unbuttoned his shirt twice, stuck the arm down the front to hold them there and then—

Her hands fisted in the bedspread.

Instinct. Her leg over his shoulder, calf braced against his neck to bring him in. His dark hair between her thighs, his mouth, his breath. Heat heat _heat_ and her back bowed up. Lights sparking gold across the ceiling, churning, churning. 

Boiling. With her. The rain refracting light to shatter. God, _God._ His tongue gave way to teeth and then she shattered.

The comedown, if she’d been standing, would have brought her down like a demolition. 

They were—this was—she’d spent so many years being fucking _deprived_.

He rested a cheek to her knee. She could barely maintain eye contact; aftershocks still knocking her to her back. He levered himself on the bed, over her, and she got one lethargic arm behind his neck to bring him down.There was the taste of her, there. Of the rain. They kissed easy and deep and for what felt like an age. He didn’t bear down and eventually broke away. “You’re still damp from outside. I’ll run a bath.”

She finally caught breath. “Are you sure?” Her gaze slid indecently low.

His grin was genuine. “You’re shivering.”

And she was, though God knew where the blame laid for that. But her hair was serpentine and her dress was really, truly starting to stick in unpleasant places, and she couldn’t bring herself to say no. She’d never taken a bath with anyone. Never had the want nor the time. Too inefficient.

She curled a hand up, brushed a thumb along his cheekbone, and let him go. “Alright.”

And with a kiss dropped to the corner of her mouth, he went.

The water started. She breathed in time, trying and failing to bring her heart down. 

It wasn’t happening. Strength coiled back into her limbs, slow and blistering. Insatiate.

There was a single light on in the bathroom. High and receded; the suggestion of it without bludgeoning the marble in glare. She found him kneeled down, one sleeve unbuttoned and rolled to the elbow. His bare arm in the water and testing temperature. And the sight was—it was the consideration. The tenderness of it; his glasses still hooked in his shirt as reached to pour something milky in the flow. It flushed the room with fragrance. Her bones ached for the warmth of it, and something half remember curled off her tongue. “ _Sunlight streams on the river stones. From high above, the river steadily plunges_ —”

He turned, astonished. She wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised when he finished: “ _Three thousand feet of sparkling water—the Milky Way pouring down from heaven_.”

It felt holy, sharing words. “I may not speak Mandarin but even I know the classics.”

“Li Bai, jewel of the Tang Dynasty.” Water clouded and drifted like cumulus through his hands. “It was said there were Three Wonders during the Golden Era _:_ Pei Min’s swordplay, Zhang Xu’s calligraphy, and the poetry of Li Bai.”

“I suppose one of the three’s not bad.” She reached an arm behind herself and found the cold channel of her zipper. The silk slipped away at her touch.

He reached for her, fingertips notching between her vertebrae. “Let me.”

Her hands fell. The zipper parted. Silk pooled to her hips and kept slithering. He caught the hem, helped her step out and then hung it with care. Her stomach fluttered helplessly. The dress was ruined, barely held together by its water-logged seams. The man wore Armani, for fucks sakes, he knew a lost cause when he was one. And yet—

The breadth of his shoulders was clear to see. She wanted to see more. See bare.

Her body was naked as ivory. Delicate lines: collarbones, wrists, ankles—she didn’t even have to crook a finger. His hands finally spread across her back. They pressed foreheads together and his lashes scraped at her cheek.

She undid his other cuff, took off his watch, made blind work of his shirt. When he shrugged it off, she folded it. Proper. Tucked his glasses far away.

He didn’t let go, hands skating downwards with the trigger of his mouth just behind. She nearly tore him out of his undershirt and finally, _finally_ did they meet skin to skin. 

It was nails. Palms. Necessity.  Belt undone and hips aligned and him goddamn _aching_ between her thighs.

Heel of her hand to his abdomen. Down. Down. He cast one fogged glance to the bath, to the water. To that cashmere-orchid heat waiting and she wasn’t fucking _having_ it. “ _Quand le vin est tiré, il faut le boire_.”

French and sex had always been tangled, when her pulse and tongue ran hot.

She pressed all in, twisted her hand just so—

He nearly flung her onto the vanity. 

Shoulder blades in the mirror, eyes on the prize, Armani pants pooled onto Italian leather. Spread. Legs wide, her fingers on the nape of his neck, sweat curling. Sweat steaming.

Fog and more fog and rutting and then _in_.

Fuck. _Fuck._

He moved, arms trembling, mouth pressed to her throat in litany. It was more breath than sound, utterly helpless in the face of her. She nearly jackknifed backwards when it hit. Pulse. Heat. Absolute suffocation.

He made a torn off, half-keened sound. They rode the aftershocks together and then just stayed to breathe. She could have puddled onto the counter.

She could have burned down the hotel around them.

When they got into the bath, he went first. She sat across his thighs, an arm around his back and her head to his shoulder. He wrapped her tight until there was no separating them out from the other, and the intimacy was so easy. There was no wondering about what it would signal, what doors it would open. It was simple. She could pour everything she was into this man and when the sun came up, it would be little more than a reverie: white wine and white steam and foreign tongues. A fantasy. 

A perfect dream to tuck away.

His palms drifted up. “Why do you think it is, that we do this?”

What? The sex, the touch, the living, the jobs, the chase?  Each unto the other, evil unto evil and kind unto kind?

“Duty,” She said. “Makes for a cold bed.”

His laugh was sharp. “And a warm bed?”

By itself? “We were not born to live as animals.” There was no imaging the world without Tony Stark. There was no imagining her life without the nova of him eclipsing all behind her. No trading that for sweat and sex and nothing beyond it. That’d be such a dull life. _Ordinary._

“We were not born to pay bills and die.” He answered. “I can’t imagine anything more tedious. Gorging and rutting and dying over the same little drab corners of little drab lives. How do people stand it?”

The steam was in her eyes. “We’re the wrong ones to ask.” Reality was loose at the edges, half mirage and half heat. 

He felt like an anchor.

He felt like a fever. “I don’t know how the world doesn’t fall in love with every revolutionary that comes along.”

Fall in love. Fall in orbit. Tony Stark had a gravitational well. She wondered if this man’s gravity had a name, a face, a dogma to live by.

The question never left her throat; never found breath to form. His mouth crossed hers and for a while, her bed was very warm indeed.

~

They sank. Into each other and into the dark.

~

Daylight came, as waking came onto sleep.

Even when he helped her into the dress ordered from the concierge, the memory was filmy and pulling thin.

The last time they touched, he kissed between her shoulder blades and then painstakingly buttoned her up. She was back in armor and so was he: fresh Dior and Serge Lutens and no sign of the bruises they’d shared in the dark.

She left with her parasol. 

She left her dress on the sink. 

Quid pro quo.

Jarvis called as soon as she flipped on her phone in the lobby. “Miss Potts, Mr. Stark wishes you to bring the contracts down to Hong Kong. They are, as they say, ready to parley.”

“Understood.” She stepped outside to punishing heat. “I’ll be on my way in forty minutes, the jet?”

“Already on route to your location.” A significant pause. “There are a bevy of favors waiting for you onboard.”

“Are there.” It wasn’t a question. Duty crowned her head in Bvlgari and wreathed her name glory. It gave her all she asked for.

It fit her lines like a glove. 

There was never any thought to looking back.

~

But if she said she hadn’t taken the parasol back to Malibu, hadn’t tucked it away safe, hadn’t dreamed fondly every blue moon when it unfurled—

She’d be lying.

 

**Author's Note:**

> To my horror no one has thought to ship Wesley and Pepper yet. So I've remedied this. With smut.


End file.
